Kapampangan is derived from the root word pampáng ("riverbank"). The language was historically spoken in the Kingdom of Tondo, ruled by the Lakans.

A number of Kapampangan dictionaries and grammar books were written during the Spanish colonial period. Diego Bergaño wrote two 18th-century books about the language: Arte de la lengua Pampanga[4] (first published in 1729) and Vocabulario de la lengua Pampanga (first published in 1732). Kapampangan produced two 19th-century literary giants; Anselmo Fajardo was noted for Gonzalo de Córdova and Comedia Heróica de la Conquista de Granada, and playwright Juan Crisóstomo Soto wrote Alang Dios in 1901. "Crissotan" was written by Amado Yuzon, Soto's 1950s contemporary and Nobel Prize nominee for peace and literature,[citation needed] to immortalize his contribution to Kapampangan literature.

Standard Kapampangan has 21 phonemes: 15 consonants and five vowels; some western dialects have six vowels. Syllabic structure is relatively simple; each syllable contains at least one consonant and a vowel.

There are four main diphthongs: /aɪ/, /oɪ/, /aʊ/, and /iʊ/. In most dialects (including standard Kapampangan), /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are reduced to /ɛ/ and /o/ respectively.

Monophthongs have allophones in unstressed and syllable-final positions:

/a/ is raised slightly in unstressed positions, except final syllables.

Unstressed /i u/ is usually pronounced [ɪ ʊ], as in English "bit" and "book" respectively (except final syllables).

In final syllables /i/ can be pronounced [ɛ, i], and /u/ can be pronounced [o, u].

deni/reni ("these") can be pronounced [ˈdɛnɛ]/[ˈɾɛnɛ] or [ˈdɛni]/[ˈɾɛni]; seli ("bought") can be pronounced [ˈsɛlɛ] or [ˈsɛli]; kekami ("to us" [except you]) can be pronounced [kɛkɐˈmɛ] or [kɛkɐˈmi]; suerti can be pronounced [ˈswɛɾtɛ] or [ˈswɛɾti], sisilim ("dusk") can be pronounced [sɪˈsilɛm] or [sɪˈsilim].

kanu ("he said, she said, they said, it was said, allegedly, reportedly, supposedly") can be pronounced [kaˈno] or [kaˈnu]; libru ("book") can be pronounced [libˈɾo] or [libˈɾu]; ninu ("who") can be pronounced [ˈnino] or [ˈninu]; kaku ("to me") can be pronounced [ˈkako] or [ˈkaku], and kamaru ("cricket") can be pronounced [kamɐˈɾo] or [kamɐˈɾu].

In the chart of Kapampangan consonants, all stops are unaspirated. The velar nasal occurs in all positions, including the beginning of a word. Unlike other Philippine languages, Kapampangan lacks the phoneme /h/.

Stress is phonemic in Kapampangan. Primary stress occurs on the last or the next-to-last syllable of a word. Vowel lengthening accompanies primary or secondary stress, except when stress occurs at the end of a word. Stress shift can occur, shifting to the right or left to differentiate between nominal or verbal use (as in the following examples):[5]

dápat ("should, ought to") → dapát ("deed, concern, business")

dapúg ("gather, burn trash") → dápug ("trash pile")

Stress shift can also occur when one word is derived from another through affixation; again, stress can shift to the right or the left:[5]

In Kapampangan, the proto-Philippineschwa vowel *ə merged to /a/ in most dialects of Kapampangan; it is preserved in some western dialects. Proto-Philippine *tanəm is tanam (to plant) in Kapampangan, compared with Tagalogtanim, Cebuanotanom and Ilocano tanem (grave).

Proto-Philippine *R merged with /j/. The Kapampangan word for "new" is bayu; it is bago in Tagalog, baro in Ilocano, and baru in Indonesian.

Absolutive or nominative markers mark the actor of an intransitive verb and the object of a transitive verb. Ergative or genitive markers mark the object (usually indefinite) of an intransitive verb and the actor of a transitive one. It also marks possession. Oblique markers, similar to prepositions in English, mark (for example) location and direction. Noun markers are divided into two classes: names of people (personal) and everything else (common).

Case markers

Absolutive

Ergative

Oblique

Common singular

ing

-ng, ning

king

Common plural

ding, ring

ring

karing

Personal singular

i

-ng

kang

Personal plural

di, ri

ri

kari

Examples:

Dintang ya ing lalaki (The man arrived).

Ikit neng Juan i Maria (Juan saw Maria).

Munta ya i Elena ampo i Robertu king bale nang Miguel (Elena and Roberto will go to Miguel's house).

In their locative forms, keni is used when the person spoken to is not near the subject spoken of; keti is used when the person spoken to is near the subject spoken of. Two people in the same country will refer to their country as keti, but will refer to their respective towns as keni; both mean "here".

The plural forms of a demonstrative pronoun and its existential form (for the nearest addressee) are exceptions. The plural of iyan is den/ren; the plural of niyan is daren; the plural of kanyan is karen, and the plural of oyan is oren. The existential form of iyan is ken.

Kapampangan verbs are morphologically complex, and take a variety of affixes reflecting focus, aspect and mode. The language has Austronesian alignment, and the verbs change according to triggers in the sentence (better known as voices). Kapampangan has five voices: agent, patient, goal, locative, and cirumstantial. The circumstantial voice prefix is used for instrument and benefactee subjects.

The direct case morphemes in Kapampangan are ing (which marks singular subjects) and reng, for plural subjects. Non-subject agents are marked with the ergative-case ning; non-subject patients are marked with the accusative-case -ng, which is cliticized onto the preceding word.[6]

Speakers of other Philippine languages find Kapampangan verbs difficult because some verbs belong to unpredictable verb classes and some verb forms are ambiguous. The root word sulat (write) exists in Tagalog and Kapampangan:

Other Philippine languages have separate forms; Tagalog has -in and -an in, Bikol and most of the Visayan languages have -on and -an, and Ilokano has -en and -an due to historical sound changes in the proto-Philippine /*e/.

A number of actor-focus verbs do not use the infix -um-, but are usually conjugated like other verbs which do (for example, gawa (to do), bulus (to immerse), terak (to dance), lukas (to take off), sindi (to smoke), saklu (to fetch), takbang (to step) and tuki (to accompany). Many of these verbs undergo a change of vowel instead of taking the infix -in- (completed aspect). In the actor focus (-um- verbs), this happens only to verbs with the vowel /u/ in the first syllable; lukas (to take off) is conjugated lukas (will take off), lulukas (is taking off), and likas (took off).

There is no written distinction between the two mag- affixes; magsalita may mean "is speaking" or "will speak", but there is an audible difference. [mɐɡsaliˈtaʔ] means "will speak" while [ˌmaːɡsaliˈtaʔ] means "is speaking".

Kapampangan, like most Philippine languages, uses the Latin alphabet. Before the Spanish colonization of the Philippines, it was written with the Kulitan alphabet. Kapampangan is usually written in one of three different writing systems: sulat Baculud, sulat Wawa and a hybrid of the two, Amung Samson.[7]

The first system (sulat Baculud, also known as tutung Capampangan or tutung Kapampangan in the sulat Wawa system) is based on Spanish orthography, a feature of which involved the use of the letters ⟨c⟩ and ⟨q⟩ to represent the phoneme /k/ (depending on the vowel sound following the phoneme). ⟨C⟩ was used before /a/, /o/ and /u/ (ca, co and cu), and ⟨q⟩ was used with ⟨u⟩ before the vowels /e/ and /i/ (que, qui). The Spanish-based orthography is primarily associated with literature by authors from Bacolor and the text used on the Kapampangan Pasion.[7]

The second system, the Sulat Wawa, is an "indigenized" form which preferred ⟨k⟩ over ⟨c⟩ and ⟨q⟩ in representing the phoneme /k/. This orthography, based on the Abakada alphabet was used by writers from Guagua and rivaled writers from the nearby town of Bacolor.[7]

The third system, Amung Samson hybrid orthography, intends to resolve the conflict in spelling between proponents of the sulat Baculud and sulat Wawa. This system was created by former Catholic priest Venancio Samson during the 1970s to translate the Bible into Kapampangan. It resolved conflicts between the use of ⟨q⟩ and ⟨c⟩ (in sulat Baculud) and ⟨k⟩ (in sulat Wawa) by using ⟨k⟩ before ⟨e⟩ and ⟨i⟩ (instead of [qu]⟩ and using ⟨c⟩ before ⟨a⟩, ⟨o⟩, and ⟨u⟩ (instead of ⟨k⟩). The system also removed ⟨ll⟩ and ⟨ñ⟩ (from Spanish), replacing them with ⟨ly⟩ and ⟨ny⟩.[7]

Orthography has been debated by Kapampangan writers, and orthographic styles may vary by writer. The sulat Wawa system has become the popular method of writing due to the influence of the Tagalog-based Filipino language (the national language) and its orthography. The sulat Wawa system is used by the Akademyang Kapampangan and the poet Jose Gallardo.[7]

From the 10th century AD to 1571, before the Spanish conquest of Lúsung Guo which resulted in the creation of the Province of Pampanga, Kapampangans used a writing system known as Kulitan or Sulat Kapampangan. Augustinian missionaries studied the Kapampangan language and its writing system.[8]

As late as 1699, more than a century after the Spanish conquest, Spaniards continued studying the Kapampangan language and writing system. The Spanish introduced a Romanized orthography, known as the Bacolor Orthography, Súlat Bacúlud or Tutûng Kapampángan (English: "genuine Kapampangan") because of the number of works written in this orthography. The orthography contains the letters q, c, f, ñ and ll.[7]

By the end of the Spanish colonization, the Abakada alphabet (also known as Súlat Wáwâ or Guagua script) replaced c and q with k. Kapampangan nationalist writers from Wáwâ (Guagua) wanted to create an identity distinct from the Bacúlud literary tradition. They were inspired by José Rizal, who proposed simplifying the Romanized Tagalog by replacing c and q with k. Two Kapampangan writers from Wáwâ, Aurelio Tolentino and Monico Mercado (with his translation of Rizal's "Mi último adiós") have adapted Rizal's proposal into Kapampangan writing.[7]

On December 31, 1937, Philippine president Manuel L. Quezon proclaimed the language based on Tagalog as the commonwealth's national language. Zoilo Hilario proposed standardizing Kapampangan orthography. A member of the Institute of National Language (INL), Hilario sought to adopt the Abakada alphabet used in Tagalog as Kapampangan's orthographic system. The legal imposition of Tagalog as the Philippine national language placed all other Philippine languages (including Kapampangan) in a subordinate position. The conflict between the "purists" and "anti-purists" which plagued the Tagalog literary scene was echoed by Kapampangan writers.[7]

In 1970 (before his translation of the Bible into Kapampangan), Venancio Samson called the dispute over Kapampangan orthography to the attention of the Philippine Bible Society and submitted a proposal aimed at reconciling the old and the new spelling in Kapampangan writing with what is known as Ámugng Samson's hybrid orthography. Samson's synthesis was readily accepted by the Catholic Archdiocese of Pampanga, which used it in most of its Kapampangan publications during the early 1970s.[7]

In 1997, the Batiáuan Foundation said that the major obstacle to popularizing Kapampangan was the intense conflict over orthography. The prediction that the Kapampangans would be absorbed by the Tagalogs was seen by Kapampangan groups as a real threat, since Tagalog words were replacing indigenous words in spoken Kapampangan. They revised the Abakada alphabet in Kapampangan writing, removing the letter w and mandating simplified diacritical marks. According to Akademyang Kapampangan, the Batiáuan revision complicates Kapampangan writing and confuses adherents of their proposed orthography. Batiáuan insists that the diacritical marks are essential in written Kapampangan, because many words are spelled the same but are pronounced differently. From this perspective, diacritical marks facilitate understanding instead of complicating the language.[7]

^In the examples, the word to which the accusative case marker attaches is a pronoun or portmanteau pronoun that is obligatorily present in the same clause as the noun with which it is co-referential. In sentences with an agent trigger, the pronoun co-refers with the agent subject. In sentences with a non-agent trigger, the portmanteau pronoun co-refers with both the ergative agent and the non-agent subject, which is marked with direct case.

Bautista, Ma. Lourdes S. 1996. An Outline: The National Language and the Language of Instruction. In Readings in Philippine Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, 223. Manila: De La Salle University Press, Inc.